personal knowledge management

about

the concept/field of PKM has been really important for me since i was 15 years old (2014). i've seen the field change and evolve a lot, and i developed a lot of my own perspectives, projects, designs and prototypes since then.

usually in more collective/organizational contexts, there are more thoroughly developed approaches, integrating other perspectives/frameworks from different fields of information science (library science, information architecture, management, taxonomy, ontology, etc) and other disciplines such as systems science, cybernetics, data management, data visualization, information design, even psychology, philosophy and cognitive science, which can create very different approaches to knowledge management.

however, by researching knowledge management across/within organizations, i'm yet to find any approaches that are profoundly practically transformative. there are many interesting initiatives, but none that are deeply integrative and propositive that i know of. it seems like it's mostly a subject relegated for nerds. the PKM field has been a lot more fruitful on this end.

i'll discuss the challenges, shortcomings and potentials of collective/distributed knowledge management a lot more on the pages: sensemaking, knowledge ecologies and knowledge management methodologies, plus in my own projects: L1F3 ontology, L1F3 management system and knowledge management system.

an introduction

a few good introductory videos:
[lab] - knowledge management fundamentals

a good visual overview of the BASB methodology (one of the most famous ones):
https://maggieappleton.com/basb

a loose/biased yet informative meme on the subject (by me):

more references:

begginer-friendly youtube channels:
thomas frank, ali abdaal, marie poulin, tiago forte

intermediate channels:
nick milo, anne-laure le cunff, august bradley, shu omi, fromsergio

more advanced / state of the art setups:
maggie appleton, gordon brander, zsolt viczián, bryan jenks, robert haisfield, andy matuschak, gwern, nikita voloboev
+ most people on my twitter "tier 1 knowledge management" list.

main tools:
notion, obsidian, logseq
+ 75 tools from my twitter list: https://twitter.com/i/lists/1401589596635402250

related terms/concepts: information ecology, tools for thought, AI, file management, social reading highlights
workflows, processes, frameworks, BASB, pillars, pipelines & vaults, C.O.D.E, PARA, L1F3 management framework.
--> relevance realization | OODA loop | DIKW pyramid...

my related projects:
knowledge management system

the origin story - my initiation into the fields of self-directed learning & knowledge management

much like alexander obenauer with the future of operating systems, gordon brander with protocols for thought, samuel timbó with the future of computing, or hanzi freinacht with the future of politics, i have a vision for the future of information and knowledge management.

it's still a seedling, since i'm still young and naive, however it includes many references and consists so far of an ontology - the L1F3 management framework, its application in a system - the L1F3 management system, and its decentralization as part of a protocol - the L1F3 protocol.

head over to these pages to learn about how they work in detail. now, if you wanna know more about where it came from and where it's going, keep reading.

its origins date back to my first epiphany about life, when i was 15 years old. i was trying to figure out what to do with my life, i discovered a few simple yet profound heuristics that served as life-changing realizations about myself and life itself, such as - life is action, my life is my biggest project, the best way to predict the future is to create it, i operate in reality through an ongoing OODA loop, i can design myself and my life and life is a metagame.

this was 2014. i was a teenager interested in the future of society, education, technology, anime and games that had just been accepted to a technical high school, so i'd graduate with an associate degree in "quality management". i picked this course because it was the broadest of all available.

yet, i only had classes at night and i'd only be able to get an internship at 16. so i had a whole year to dedicate (during daytime) to whatever i wanted to learn.

this could be a good opportunity to figure out what do in college (in brazil we need to know the whole degree upon application). should i go for engineering (in line with my associate degree), business management (the broadest one), follow my deep interests (though no clear applicability) of psychology/philosophy/economics, or really go for tech (computer science)?

i signed up for courses in edx/coursera (AI, XR, game design), marginal revolution (economics), crashcourse (psychology/philosophy) and systems innovation (entrepreneurship, business innovation, systems thinking).

about 2 weeks in, i had this pervasive feeling that either something was wrong with me or there was something wrong with all of these courses.

based on my experience of learning very quickly and enjoyably though games (very short feedback loops), i had a few intuitions on the subject of learning itself and an underlying sense of uneasiness, restlessness, that the way they were teaching was outdated and what was being taught was also utterly irrelevant, or at least, missing the point.

it seemed like (and now i know that it didn't only seem, it was the case) that we were being taught to learn skills to "fit into the marketforce", to "serve the demands of other humans", but not really looking into/figuring out our own demands. our own desires. what we want to be learning, doing, making out of our lives. (and investigating where these desires even come from)

it took me a long time to find the words and references to refer to this, both sociologically (the metacrisis - how most of our economy/behaviors are perpetuating a self-terminating system of extraction) but also technically on the subject of learning itself (more on this below).

the major turning point happened when i went through the whole 4-week "learning how to learn" curriculum in 2 days and was absolutely underwhelmed.

i was seeing clearly how "learning how to learn" wasn't about techniques, but mostly about the extended context of the learner - their environment, frame of mind, references/curation, emotional state and other available resources & guidance. (i.e. ontological design).

plus, i had lots of intuitions that way later on i found articulated in the KM space (+ adjacent fields): tools for thought as cultural practices & extended cognition (maggie appleton), transformational tools for thought (andy matuschak & michael nielsen), the unique affordances of the computational medium (bret victor), knowledge-building & representation as fractal structures francis miller, knowledge management ontologies such as scaling synthesis' or my own l1f3 management ontology, accessing & enhancing topographical intelligence via maps (simon wardley) - and many others that i still haven't found well-articulated by anyone (such as how game UIs/UXs could be incredibly useful for real-life management)...

if i, as a 15-year-old was feeling/noticing all that, how could these experts not be? this, alongside my underwhelming experience at my high school/technical degree, which was an extension of the "second best university in brazil", and therefore supposed to be "good", led me to an existential crisis.

(given - this specific course was an introductory one. yet, i couldn't stop thinking - was this the most valuable information they could think of sharing to the broadest audience possible? i went into their references and the more i looked into it, the more depressed i felt. their approach to learning was very limited, with no regard whatsoever for life design, knowledge manag[[personal knowledge managementn]])

i started literally asking google all of my questions and going through dozens of pages. "what are the fundamental ways in which we learn how we learn?" "why do i have much better tools to manage my fictional characters than tools to manage myself/real life?" "why don't we have missions, challenges, skills, attributes, maps, to manage our lives?" "how do i manage my life as my biggest project?".

i started searching for tools for organizing my learning/self/life. there had to be a better way.

these realizations led me to a few months obsessively researching "how to organize my life", "how to manage a project", "how to manage myself", "tools for playing life more effectively" and trying to stick together some spreadsheets to create a comprehensive "life management system".

"if i don't know what either myself or the world will look like in 5-10 years, instead of committing to just one of these options, couldn't i "learn how to learn" to be prepared/more adaptable for anything that comes my way (or most of it)?"

this awareness of going 'meta' came on: i was interested in learning how to learn, thinking about how to think, examining how i examine myself (in line with the psychological/philosophical ideas i was starting to get into contact with). in the MHC framework (part of adult development research), that's exactly the transition into stage 12 - systematic.

finally, still as a 15-year-old, i found a few references that helped me orient myself at the time, namely - metacognition, mental models (farnamstreet) and GTD.

even with all my effort, this was 2015 and i lacked the historical background, research skills, a network, academic knowledge to help me navigate this inquiry (plus several blind spots as part of growing up part of a brazilian middle-class), so even though i started using GTD, evernote and lots of coaching tools, it took me 3 years to stumble upon the term "knowledge management", and go beyond mainstream ideas, understanding it as both a practice and an actual academic field of study.

i tried some obscure software such as emacs, thebrain, bitrix24, apps such as habitica, lifeRPG, superbetter, and my own mix of macros/spreadsheets, zapier/IFTTT, but none of it did 10% of what i'd hoped.

to this day, it's extremely dumbfounding to me how we live in an information age, yet this subject is mostly unknown, relegated as something just for librarians, some IT professionals, a few managers/nerds at a large company, or a handful of questionable consultants and obscure academics.

that is, until ~2018, when tools such as notion, roam research and obsidian were launched, bringing a new surge of popularity to this idea of "no-code", tools for thought and "online productivity tools" in general - and now it also became a subject for internet nerds. yay! 🙃

since that time i've been dedicating a large amount of my time and energy thinking about "personal systems design" in the form of this "building a second brain" / "digital systems design", but i still feel most of the content in these fields is far from the essence of it. it's still captured by mechanistic worldviews and win-lose dynamics.

the feeling that has guiding me since my first experience of awakening has changed and evolved in many ways, but still underlies everything i do, learn, sense, share and build in this field. i trust my judgment and experience above - but in relationship with - all external sources (which often proves itself to be extremely challenging), but this unique "taste", "design" or "feel" still remains as the guiding force, and while i can't always follow it blindly, plus it's hard to articulate and ever-evolving, there's a unique preciousness to it, i intend to keep tending to it.

andy matuschak refers to this sensibility in a similar way and tries to pinpoint its characteristics in a recent thread. and i've been slowly capturing it on: design principles, design philosophies, theories of change, memetics and manifestos.

so what does this mean in practice?

i believe that by spending a lot of time immersed in this field, but also removing myself completely from it at times and experiencing other walks of life - made me not so pigeonholed and academic, so i discovered several other strongly synergistic fields that don't often dialogue with knowledge management as a discipline/practice.

in fact, these are other areas (explored in more depth at 05 - core references & resources) that most people on the field don't even know exist (the paradox of a field that's precisely about evidencing knowledge) - and this whole experience, while incredibly confusing at first, gave me a lot of clarity on how we can move beyond academic propositions and cozy software to agentic psychotechnological tools that can empower and transform the experience of being yourself, even for people that never heard of the term.

and this isn't trashing on the field, i learn from it constantly and love a great deal of it. and i believe most of us researchers/practitioners feel this potential (in "humane tech" or "tech for good"), but just like "social impact" or "sustainable development" isn't enough, there's a strong need for deeper analyses of our philosophical basis and a move towards integrating of our efforts into not just standards, but protocols. plus, like in any other "market" today, there's too much hype, speculation, ego and energy dispersion in all directions underlying it all.

in short, the understanding/approach that i'm arriving at today is that:

i don't intend to propose a "definitive" or "best" way to handle information, but i intend to focus on some patterns and highlight a few design principles. a focus on personal data management, with local-first, low-dependency data management patterns, able to be integrated into multiple interoperable, agent-centric apps and frameworks, shared in lots of different, flexible, contextual views, taking into account the different needs and values of people/institutions, sure is one of the better ones.

and though still low-code output, i've been researching/curating/prototyping several systems and tools in this direction - you can see more of them at my projects page, or start with the l1f3 management system.